Roller Coasters!

Tis week we talked about how gravitational potential energy is used to propel roller coasters through twists, turns, and loops.  In class, we made roller coasters using 3x5 cards.  We each had a potential energy "budget" that came from a ramp set at a fixed height.  If someone wanted to use more energy, they had to design a ride that went off the table to the ground.

My Student's are making a Video Game. Pt 1

Last semester, I dabbled in RPG Maker VX Ace with my computer class.  I had them help out with elements of a game that I produced.  I've decided to pull out all of the stops and give them complete creative control of the building process.

RPG Maker VX Ace has a wonderful mapping utility.

The plan is to have them handle all of the writing and design elements of the game while I do the grunt work over the course of the next semester.  So far, I've had them begin the writing of the story and even write up a budget for our "game studio."  These fulfill the requirements of my class to review MS Word and Excel.

The blank map is used to select random shapes for continents.

Next, I am doing some work with GIMP to teach image manipulating.  The first thing we've done is made world maps.  Each student starts with a "blank" map.  They then select chunks to be the continents and add details to separate the biomes and climates.  These designs can then be translated into RPG Maker VX Ace.

Here's something I cooked up in GIMP.

Meteorites!

With the recent meteorite action in Russia, I thought it would be a great time to bust out my own meteorite activity in class.  I put dishes of flour on the tables and had students drop objects from different heights.  They also tested to see if an object with more mass would make a larger crater.

More Newton Footage

Our school got ahold of some MacBook Airs, so I decided to flex my film editing skills with this one.  We reviewed Newton's laws through a series of activities and I recorded them with my high speed camera.  Here's the result.

Thor vs. Physics!

To help demonstrate Newton's 3rd Law of Motion, I have a student stand on a rotating platform and swing my homemade Mjolnir (http://rjcosplay.blogspot.com/2012/05/my-mjolnir.html).  I had "Loki" stand in front of him and I assured her that she could not be hit with the mighty hammer.  Sure enough, every swing of the hammer moved "Thor" in a circle in the opposite direction of the hammer and he never landed a blow.

We also demonstrated the 3rd Law by using balloons.  A couple students aimed them at their foreheads and let go.  The air rushing out of the balloons forced the ballons into their faces. 

As a bonus, we did a demonstration on the conservation of momentum.  A ping pong ball dropped on a golf ball is launched super high due to the larger mass of the golf ball.

Fight Science!

Way back in college, I recall seeing a special on National Geographic called Fight Science.  At the time, I was studying Isshinryu Karate and was pretty interested in combining the study of martial arts with Scientific theories and measurements.  While the "measurements" were presented in a manner that promoted the show rather than the Science, it was still an interesting show with some good explanations of fundamental concepts of Physics.

In class today, we're talking about force.  I have my students make a hypothesis about which fighter will be able to punch the hardest based on what they know about force.  The fighters hit a crash test dummy, and we get results in pounds (I convert to Newtons).

This usually leads to pretty thoughtful discussions about how the size/mass of the fighter affects the force of the punch and how each fighter can generate speed in a punch. 

It's an interesting lesson that grabs the attention of a lot of the students whose interests lie in the somewhat unsavory realm.  I think its actually a good idea to promote this kind of training for students who get in trouble a lot.  Any martial art teaches discipline and structure, which most kids need.  Also, they're a lot of fun.

Newtoooooooon!

I started teaching Newton's Law of Motion today.  I presented my students with some inertia based challenges.  Each of these was a take on the old tablecloth trick.  They had to remove a piece of paper from between two bottles, or from under a coin with one finger.  Below are some of the results at 300 fps.